Shooting the Ambulance

In October 2016, the Fiscal Monitor of the IMF issued a report which stated that the global debt ‘is currently at an all-time high’. Both before and after the crisis of 2007–2008, the levels of debt have simply exploded. No wonder, then, that a lot of contemporary artists have responded to this unprecedented historical situation. In this article, I focus on the artist duo Claire Fontaine, through three key concepts: debt, depression, strike. First, I analyse the ways in which the artist intervenes in the disastrous debt situation in the southern part of the Euro zone. Second, I argue that Claire Fontaine is concerned with the psychopathological consequences of the debt economy, in particular with the political problem of depression. Last, I show how the work of Claire Fontaine anatomises depression not only as a passive symptom, but also a paradoxical form of active resistance to the neoliberal debt regime, ie as a human strike

Debt · Debt crisis · Depression (economics · Economic history · Economics · Great Depression · Keynesian economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Student debt · Wonder · Art History and Market Analysis · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · History · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Psychology · Social Psychology · Finance